The Middle of Thanksgiving
I love Thanksgiving. I love seeing the family members that I don’t get to see very often due to distances, or time constraints, or just living our crazy lives.
I love the holiday movies created for and about Thanksgiving, but after watching this year I realized something I’m not sure I noticed before; they are all about the same. They either show a person coming back home to a crazy, morose, or tragic family, or they show a perfectly well adjusted family who looks perfect and well adjusted and dresses perfectly and has perfect manners and only speaks in platitudes and proverbs. As much as I love these movies, and always have, that just isn’t real for most of us.
Most of us live our lives somewhere in the middle. Not tragic. Not sublime. I think most of us live somewhere in the middle of those places. We all have those members of our family that we don’t “get”, that don’t make sense to us because of what they do with their days or their views on politics, or religion, or life or whatever. Most of us have those memories of childhood traumas like “you were mom’s favorite” or “dad just seemed to like you better” or whatever. But if we look at our families of origin, the ones we came from and the ones we are creating for the next generation, I think it is easy to see why we go home. All in all, we’re okay. Not tragic everyday, not triumphant everyday, but somewhere in the middle. And the middle is a great place.
There will always be those times that we face uncertainty, and the middle is where we run to for the safety of family and friends who knew us “before” when the biggest choices we faced were what to watch on Saturday morning television and what kind of cereal to choose.
There will always be, I mean we hope for anyway, those times of triumph. The times that we want to call back to our “middle” and tell everyone about our triumphs and know that they will be cheering for us, and yes, maybe a little jealous of us.
The middle is that place that teenagers loathe for its mediocrity and commonplace. But when you become old, say thirty or forty, you begin to realize again the beauty of the middle. Because by forty, most of us look around and realize we have created a “middle” of our own.
I turned forty-five this year. Maybe that is why I can say out loud without apology that I love the middle now. I’ve always loved my family, each one of them. I’ve always appreciated how we were all different and important, but I’m not sure I was unapologetic about it. I thought that somehow made me blasé’ or something. That has changed over the years though and I realize it most when I take a moment reflect and realize the wonderful people I come from and have been built by. I appreciate my mom and all that she did for us. No matter how messed up some of it was, she did her best and that is all you can hope for. I appreciate my dad and step-mom. They try so hard to keep a “middle” for us, even though it seems to get harder and harder for them to keep on keeping on some days. I appreciate my sisters and brother and their families so much more now, as I see them strive for their own normal places in this great big crazy world that seems to consider middle a place to run from rather than gravitate to.
Maybe that is why I love Thanksgiving most of all- the gravity. We all seem to find our center during this time of year. Whether it is back to our faith, our first families, our contemporary families be they friends or kin or both, we all seem to come “home” and the home is always in the middle of it.
Happy Thanksgiving everybody. May God bless and keep you all
~ Peace
